PresidentJoe Biden had one of the most prolific first two years of any recent president.
When he announced his first campaign for president, some thought his yearning for the days when people with differing opinions, including rampant segregationists and defenders of Jim Crow, could still get things done, was out of touch or willfully ignorant.
Instead, Mr Biden parlayed his 36 years as a senator from Delaware and his eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president and liaison to Capitol Hill into breaking gridlock in historic ways. And he did so even as some Republicans continued to radicalise and dig their heels in despite former president Donald Trump’s exit that came alongside a riot the former president incited.
On Tuesday, Mr Biden announced his campaign for re-election, and his fourth campaign for president in as many decades. But Mr Biden mostly refrained from highlighting specific policies he passed and instead focused on larger themes. At the same time, he has achieved major legislative accomplishments and hopes to pass even more should he earn a second term.
With his campaign now in full swing, let’s take a look at some of the major policy priorities the president will seek to marshall across the finish line if he secures a second term.
Major achievements – and setbacks – with tight margins in Congress
Despite a slim margin in the House of Representatives and an evently divided Senate, he managed to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, a massive climate and health care bill, a gigantic relief package for Covid-19, the first major piece of gun legislation in almost 30 years, a law to boost the manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States and protections for same-sex and interracially married couples.
For the most part, Mr Biden preferred to go the bipartisan route, working with Democrats and Republicans when it came to infrastructure, guns and semiconductors. Similarly, when he nominated Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US Supreme Court, he did so with the support of three Republican Senators: Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
But occasionally, he had to go without collaboration with Republicans, as was the case when he passed his America Rescue Plan Act – which included Covid-19 stimulus checks, extended unemployment insurance, money for vaccines and an expanded Child Tax Credit. In that case, Mr Biden needed to rely on the Senate using a process called budget reconciliation, wherein the Senate could pass legislation with a simply majority as long as it pertained to spending. Senate Democrats employed a similar tactic when they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, their spending and health care legislation. On both occasions, Vice President Kamala Harris had to break the tie to pass the legislation.
At the same time, two of the biggest facilitators of his biggest bipartisan wins also stonewalled his more progressive wishlist items. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona brokered the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the gun bill, but they continued to support the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold that has prevented the passage of more sweeping legislation.
Their opposition to more spending and higher taxes, respectively, also killed his signature social spending bill known as Build Back Better, while the support for the filibuster essentially tabled attempts on police reform, voting rights and an assault weapons ban. Ms Sinema would later leave the Democratic Party and become an independent, though she continues to caucus with Democrats for committee purposes.
Mr Biden, a Catholic who has at times seemed uneasy discussing abortion, received perhaps the biggest jolt to his domestic agenda in June 2022 when the Supreme Court handed down its Dobbs v Jackson decision overturning abortion protections enshrined in Roe v Wade. But so far Congress has not been able to pass legislation to cement the right to an abortion.
A second-term agenda
Mr Biden’s announcement video did not mention what he wanted to accomplish in his second term. Still, he has said what he hoped would pass if he were given a more amenable Congress.
As a senator, one of Mr Biden’s signature accomplishments was passing a ban on assault weapons in 1994 that ultimately expired in 2004 during George W Bush’s presidency. Mr Biden has invoked the need to pass such a ban in the wake of a flurry of mass shootings in recent months.
“I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns,” he said in March after a mass shooting at a school in Nashville, Tennessee.
“The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre. It’s a crazy idea. They’re against that. And so, I think the Congress should be passing the assault weapons ban,” he said.
In addition to Mr Biden’s desire for an assault weapons ban, he has also iterated the need to pass legislation to codify the now-defunct protections in Roe v Wade. In May of last year, when the Dobbs opinion leaked ahead of a final ruling, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer set up a vote on the House-passed Women’s Health Protection Act, but Mr Manchin opposed it along with every Republican senator, killing the bill.
Mr Biden pledged that if given the opportunity, he would codify the protections of Roe, but he will need an expanded majority in Congress to do so.
In order to abate Mr Manchin, Mr Schumer and Mr Biden pared down the environmental aspects of Build Back Better in what ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act. While the law was the largest piece of legislation to combat climate channge, were he to win another term, Mr Biden would likely pursue further legislation to mitigate rising temperatures. Similarly, Mr Manchin’s opposition to paid family leave stymied efforts to pass it, but were Mr Biden to have a larger majority in Congress, he could still likely pass it.
Mr Biden’s second-term agenda will require cooperation from Congress. And even if Mr Biden were to somehow win re-election and his coattails could help Democrats flip the requisite seats needed to win back the House majority, he could still wind up with a Senate minority – effectively dooming any shot at major legislation in Congress. The 2024 election will feature Senate races in five states where Mr Biden won – Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But three seats held by Democrats will be up for grabs in states that Donald Trump won twice – Ohio, West Virginia and Montana.
So far, Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana have announced they would each seek a fourth term. But Mr Manchin, whose state has become overwhelmingly Republican, has yet to announce his re-election.
If none of those Senators win re-election but every Democrat in states Mr Biden won win, Democrats would wind up with a 48-51 minority in the Senate.
